American Gothic

By E L Block

It was a homecoming. Aspiring novelist Elizabeth Farmer thinks all of her dreams are finally becoming a reality when she and her husband move to the quaint, seaside tourist town of Haven. But reality and fiction intertwine as Elizabeth discovers the disturbing secrets of her new home, in a haunting story that moves between past and present, examining the constructs of our most meaningful relationships, the concept of the American dream, and the murky depths of the human psyche.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Titletown Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Sep 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781955047050

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Copyright ©2022 E L Block. All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, except for passages excerpted for the purposes of review, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, or to order additional copies, please contact:

TitleTown Publishing, LLC

P.O. Box 12093 Green Bay, WI 54307-12093

920.737.8051 | titletownpublishing.com

Editor: Tracy C. Ertl

Proofreader: Megan Richard

PUBLISHER’S CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Names: Block, E L, author.

Title: American Gothic / E L Block.

Description: Green Bay, WI : TitleTown Publishing, LLC, [2022]

Identifiers: ISBN: 978-1-955047-04-3 (paperback)

978-1-955047-05-0 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: American Dream--Fiction. | Success--Fiction. | Man-woman relationships--Fiction. | Interpersonal relations--Fiction. | Paranormal fiction. | Suspense fiction. | Psychological fiction. | LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction) | BISAC: FICTION / Thrillers / Supernatural. | FICTION / Ghost. | FICTION / Gothic.

Classification: LCC: PS3602.L64263 A44 2022 | DDC: 813.6--dc23

For my family and friends.

Thank you for believing in me.

Contents

High School

College

My Parents

Margaret Fuller

Haven

The Farm

Sarah

Dr. Lawrence

Ethan and Eliza

The Cottage

John and Jenny

Kingston University

Eliza’s Manuscript

American Gothic

August came, and with it already a faint and troubling premonition of the autumn – a breath, a fragrance, and an odor – that somehow spoke of summer’s ending.

–Thomas Wolfe, American Author

High School

I fell in love with Adam Shepherd at summer camp. In Essex County, the public and parochial students were adversaries, but at Camp Laurelwood, we were one in the same. The kids from Essex. I didn’t care for sports or games, and wanted nothing to do with the water, but I loved watching Adam enjoy them. At the end of every school year, I looked forward to seeing how he’d changed since the summer before. Would he be taller? Would he have braces now? Would his hair be different? I learned everything I could about him, and he didn’t even know my name. Once we aged out of the summer camp program, I was lucky if I saw Adam from a distance a few times each year. The summer before my junior year, it was announced that the parochial high school was being shut down due to faltering attendance, and its remaining students would be integrated with the public high school. Fate was finally bringing us together, but it would still be an entire school year before Adam Shepherd knew my name.

I often lingered in the empty halls after creative writing club, just to get a glimpse of him coming in from football practice. He always looked at me and smiled, but I knew it didn’t mean anything. Adam smiled at everyone. He was good looking, popular, on the honor roll, the quarterback of the football team, and the lead in the school play. Everyone adored him. He had a beautiful girlfriend, of course – Isabelle – but she had been transferred to a Catholic boarding school in Boston when the high schools were combined.

I’d never been one to join things. I did love creative writing club, not only because I loved literature, but because it was largely a silent and autonomous activity. That year I painted sets for the school play, I joined the photography club and the school newspaper – anything that kept me quietly behind the scenes, and gave me a reason to be wherever Adam was. My best friend, Amy, begrudgingly joined them all with me. I was the only friend she had, and going along with whatever I was doing always beat the alternative of being by herself. There was something about Adam I was just so drawn to, even without knowing him personally. After a year of being nearer to him than ever before, I was no longer content to be silently observing his world from the sidelines. It was time to become a part of it.

The summer before senior year, I was allowed to take the train by myself for the first time, to visit my older sister, Katherine, in New York. She was enrolled in a summer internship program at Columbia University, where she studied architecture. Kate had always been beautiful, smart, and popular. She never had an awkward stage, an embarrassing moment, or so much as a bad hair day. It was truly unfair. We had all the same facial features, the same body type, even similar voices…but somehow, Kate was beautiful, and I was not. I was as mousey as they came. If I was going to take a real step into Adam’s world senior year, that needed to change.

We walked to the Starbucks at the edge of the Columbia campus, and I told Kate all about him. She was surprised to hear me talk so incessantly, and with such passion, about anything other than books or coffee. The boyfriend market is basically like the housing market, she told me. Everyone wants the ideal house, in the ideal location, at the ideal price – but you only realistically get two of the three. The cute nice guys aren’t usually smart, the smart nice guys aren’t usually cute, and the cute smart guys aren’t usually nice. Adam was a rare trifecta. I needed to be a rare trifecta, too. Kate was more than excited to help, insisting I was already everything I thought I wasn’t.

That night we sat down on the sofa in the living area of Kate’s tiny, one room apartment and we watched an old Audrey Hepburn movie called Sabrina. I could really relate to Sabrina Fairchild. She’d been in love with David Larrabee her entire life, and he didn’t even know her name. She went away for two years, to culinary school in France, I think, and came back a beautiful, sophisticated woman that he was instantly drawn to. That was exactly what I needed to do, but I had two months, not two years.

Kate loaned me some of her clothes, and taught me how to dress in a way that flattered my figure, versus catering to the current trend. Let’s be honest, no matter what decade it was when you were in high school, no current trend was ever really that flattering. Our mother used to take us shopping for new school clothes in New York City every late summer. I can still picture her walking down the street with one of her long, skinny cigarettes between her fingers, pointing at the store windows in disgust as she saw what was back in fashion that year. The year bell bottoms re-emerged as fit and flare jeans, she needed a second glass of chardonnay at lunch just to get through the rest of the afternoon. Those shopping trips ended when Kate graduated. My mother had come to the conclusion that high-end boutiques were wasted on me. She also knew that she couldn’t send me to the local mall on my own, because I’d return with one sweater (that looked almost exactly like a sweater I already had) and a half dozen new books.

Kate showed me how to apply a little makeup for a fresh and flawless look that wasn’t overdone. Prior to that, my makeup routine was Clearasil and Chapstick. She showed me how to style my long, brown hair so that it had volume and shine without looking wet, teased, or product heavy. She knew exactly what would work for me, because she’d already done the legwork to figure out exactly what would work for her.

I was ready. This was the year Adam Shepherd would know my name – just as soon as I changed it. Betsy sounded too cute for a young woman, but Elizabeth seemed much too formal. I didn’t care for Beth or Liz. And God forbid, Lizzie. That would make anyone on the entire Eastern seaboard think of Lizzie Borden.

Lizzie Borden took an axe,

And gave her mother forty whacks,

When she saw what she had done,

She gave her father forty-one.

Once again, Kate had it made. Kate was the perfect shortened name for Katherine. It was mature, but not old. It was strong and smart, but still feminine. Our mother always said that with a last name like Farmer, it was imperative we had the most sophisticated first names possible. I considered going by my middle name, Jane. Using my initials could be very literary, I thought, but E.J. Farmer didn’t sound the least bit feminine or alluring. Elizabeth it would have to be.

Everyone took notice when I walked through the doors on the first day of school, not just because I looked different than before, but because I was no longer striving to go unnoticed. The most popular football players were gathered together in a group just outside the doors to the gym. The same handful of them were always huddled around one another, and always up to something stupid. Every one of them was looking at me, including Adam. He smiled as always, and for the first time ever, I looked him in the eyes and smiled back. They were so beautifully blue.

We had more classes together our senior year, and in every one, Adam seemed to choose the seat closest to mine. My favorite class was English, not just because I loved literature and language more than anything, but because Adam sat directly behind me. Every time the teacher gave a stack of handouts to each row, instructing us to take one and pass the rest back, I looked forward to that split second when the papers connected us. He always whispered thank you as he took the handouts from me, and every time I heard it, I could feel the apples of my cheeks become warm.

The creative writing club met in the English room right after school. The football players had just finished practice and were heading up the stairs from the locker room as I was walking out the back